User:WabashClassics/GreekLaw

Ancient Greek law is a branch of comparative jurisprudence relating to the laws and legal institutions of Ancient Greece.

'''Oikos

The Oikos, or the household, had its own specific laws to regulate its practices. Because family and the ties of kinship were what citizenship was based upon in Athens, status also plays an active role. Oikos law includes regulations of marriage, inheritance, and citizenship status through entry into the demes. These regulations correlate with personal status and the cultural value of citizenship. After the reforms of Pericles’ in 451 B.C., we see Oikos law being developed further through surviving court speeches. Through these speeches, we can begin to grasp the importance of citizenship in Ancient Athens. Only those who are citizens may receive the benefits of being an Athenian, and Athenians after 451 B.C. began to tightly regulate citizenship. Marriage law and inheritance law both derive aspects of their regulation from status and are dedicated to preserving the Oikos. Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/0 is often cited as the first true citizenship law—as in a law regulating citizenship. Prior to him, membership in a deme was all that was required to be a citizen. The deme registration process required Athenian youth to present evidence and a case that they were qualified under the law to become citizens; part of this included your father being a member. Pericles’ citizenship law put a qualification on receiving membership. Those who wished to enroll in the demes must have had two citizen parents. By enacting this law, all the privileges and rights that went along with becoming an Athenian citizen, which included participating in festivals, on juries, and in the Athenian assembly, were more strictly watched and regulated. The inception of the law likely represents the growing value of Athenian citizenship, though others argue for alternative reasons behind the law. Loss of citizenship is a primary concern echoed in many of the surviving courtroom speeches, and those who tried to usurp citizenship were reviled. Citizenship status provided an Athenian with certain benefits associated with citizenship including marriage, inheritance, and access to important cultural sections of the society like religious practices; the punishments for breaking the laws on citizenship were harsh. One of these benefits was marriage. Marriage was an essential aspect of the Ancient Athenian society. It created a family unit that would ensure an heir to the family property. Legally, the two necessities of a legitimate marriage were the engue, or the oath, and the synoikein, or the living together. A betrothal usually took place between the father of the bride and the groom as part of legal procedure. The woman who was to be married had a kyrios, or guardian, who made the arrangements of the marriage with her future husband. If a dowry were to be exchanged in a marriage, the arrangements would be made during the betrothal. While the law did not require a dowry, the exchange of a dowry was a basic legal procedure that occurred in most every marriage. The dowry served as collateral in a marriage by protecting the wife if the husband wanted a divorce; legally, the husband had to return or pay interest on a dowry if he left her. After the groom and the kyrios completed the betrothal agreements, the synoikein, or the living together of the husband and wife was the next step to legitimize a legal marriage. This cohabitation in the household confirmed the engue and the marriage itself because the engue was not legally binding. The ceremony, while often perceived to be a legal necessity of marriage, was only celebrated to give the marriage more validity. A special type of marriage that was present in Ancient Greece was the marriage of an epikleros or an heiress to the property of a deceased male who didn’t have any male heirs. The marriage was an important aspect of law because who ever married her would also receive the property that she was attached to. In Athenian law the heiress was legally forced to marry who the Archon decided was her closest male relative. The succession started out with the eldest brother of the deceased male, it then went to the sons of brothers, and then to the sons of the sisters of the deceased male. Evidence of this can been seen in the court room speech of Isaeus, On the Estate of Cleonymus 10. After the children of the deceased sister the next relatives in the succession were the uncles, first paternal and second maternal. After the uncles we have no direct evidence to how the heiress would marry. We may assume that it followed the same pattern as the other for claiming the estate where there were no children, male or female. Citizens and non-citizens received different forms of protection under the law. Other statuses would operate under different laws. Xenoi, or foreigners, would be unable to participate in some of the things regulated to citizens. Resident foreigners, metics, would have had more rights than xenoi, but less than a full-fledged citizen. Only citizens were allowed to have full participation in Athenian society through marriage, adoption, and inheritance. All of these directly relate to Athenian perceptions of the Oikos and its purpose in Athenian culture. Oikos law provides protection to citizens of the privileges associated with being a member of the politeiai specifically regarding household issues.

Agora/Emporion

In ancient Athens, different laws and courts regulated two different realms of financial transaction and commerce. The kind of economic activity and its location dictated which courts handled each situation. Depending on whether the activity took place in the agora or within maritime trade, the case would be brought to the emporion or a series of regular courts.

The land and maritime court systems served different purposes and operated in separate ways. The emporion dealt strictly with maritime cases, whereas the agora dealt with land based cases. More precisely, the emporion called for written contracts, but the agora did not require them for each case. The agora tried citizens and metics of Athens who broke laws regarding land based commerce within the polis; however, the emporion tried criminals both Athenian and foreign who broke trade regulations or their written contract.

Using horoi and texts from court cases, a few laws that regulated securitized loans in ancient Athens can be inferred. Although there is no explicit law that requires horoi, or mortgage stones, to be placed onto legally encumbered property, the implementation of such a security marker was a point of contingency in court. Trials involving securitized property often involved debate and discourse over the absence or presence of horoi, and whether or not they qualified as suitable evidence against a borrower. Furthermore, important laws regarding securitized loans and lender/borrower relationships can also be inferred from other court cases. Most of the laws involving securitized property strongly protected the lender and even allowed the lender to forcibly take the pledged security if the defaulted borrower refused to turn over the property and ejected the creditor from the premises.

Contracts governed maritime trade in Ancient Athens. These contracts were supported by law through the courts. The contracts were made between individuals or partners and not corporations. The courts sought to enforce the conditions made in the contracts or they allowed people to dispute the validity of contracts. These contracts dealt with trade to and from Athens and they spelled out all the requirements a borrower must do to fulfill the contract, such as the route they must take and the cargo they must sell as well as interest rates. If a ship was lost at sea the contract would be null and void and the lender would lose his money. This led to a much higher interest rate on maritime trade than that seen in landed trade. Maritime contract disputes would be taken to the courts located in the emporion in the Piraeus. There is only one extant example of a contract from ancient Athens and that can be found in Demosthenes Against Lakritos 35.

Legal intervention within the Agora was necessary when taking the grain trade into consideration. Laws regulating the amount allowed on hand, price mark ups granted within one days time, and laws guaranteeing that any ship funded by a loan in Athens had to bring back grain all helped keep the cost of grain low and the supply high. Grain was very important to Athens because it was a staple to the average diet to all Athenians and the soil was not suitable to grow enough grain to allow Athens to become self-efficient grain growers. Lysias (22) explains that the grain traders claim they are bringing grain into the city just to help the people, but he objects to this claims by pointing out that the grain traders sell often times at six times the daily profit. In order to aid themselves in the profiteering the grain traders were even accused of fabricating natural disaster rumors in order to make a larger profit (Lysias 22.14).

One exception to the typical procedure between maritime loans and the vessels to which they apply are the grain laws that were enacted in ancient Athens. One example of governmental intervention into maritime trade was the Grain-Tax law of 374/373 B.C. This law was a stipulation implemented to regulate the process by which the grain was transported to the agora, what the legal weights and measurements for sale were, and how much the grain could be legally sold for. Some of these grain laws and regulations were so adamant and severe that infractions of the law could potentially end in a death sentence for the criminal impeding the law.

Further Reading: For further reading regarding grain law and governmental intervention see Ronald Shroud’s “Athenian Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 B. C.” and Gagarin and Cohen’s The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. For further reading regarding securitized loans see Moses Finley’s Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens and John Fine’s Horoi; Studies in Mortgage, Real Security and Land Tenure in Ancient Athens. For reading about other types of commerce, trade, and regulation laws not covered see Paul Millet’s Athens: Interest and M.I. Finley’s The Ancient Economy.

Procedure

Ancient Greek legal procedure, broadly defined, covers all the rules and restrictions of legal action from the initial accusation, through the pre-trial process, to the trial itself, and finally to the determination of punishment following the hearing-in-chief. These procedures varied significantly based both on the kind of charge presented and the actions of the litigants. Additionally, different court systems could have radically different procedures. The Areopagus and the popular courts, for example, allowed the litigants to present evidence, gather witness testimony, cite laws, and use rhetorical arguments to make their case. The judicial panel of The Eleven, however, could decide a case summarily if the perpetrator was caught in the act or confessed. Thus, procedure needs to be defined based on the specific type of case involved.

Markey - Before most lawsuits went to trial, litigants were required to perform a number of pre-trial procedures. Usually, the first step for the prosecutor was to inform the accused of the charges against him. This could be done with witnesses present, or in the case of homicide, the accusation was made in a public place. Following this, the disputing parties prepared their arguments and evidence for trial in the anakrisis. During this proceeding, the litigants were questioned regarding what arguments they would make during the hearing-in-chief. Following this, if the case met certain criteria, the final step in the pre-trial process would be public arbitration. Here, a public arbitrator chosen by the state attempted to bring both parties to a suitable compromise, however if either litigant objected then the case would go before the courts. Alternatively, litigants could decide to settle their differences outside of the formal legal system through private arbitration. Demosthenes 33, Against Apatourius, gives us a detailed look at the private arbitration process. The litigants in this case decided to settle out of court, allowing them to choose for themselves what issue was to be decided, who the arbitrator would be, and any other terms of the dispute. This shows remarkable faith on the part of the Athenian legal system for their citizens to handle legal issues themselves.

Torma -

An aspect of Athenian legal procedure which was markedly different than in other societies was the open approach to gaps. Regarding gaps, Michael Gagarin, author of “The Unity of Greek Law,” writes that “Because no legislator, no matter how diligent, can enact laws covering every conceivable situation, there are always some “gaps” in the laws and cases arise that are not directly covered by existing legislation.”  He points out that “Greek legislation is unusual, however, not because gaps are present, but because the Greeks explicitly recognize gaps and are willing to tolerate them.”   Whereas in contemporary Near-Eastern, later Roman, and even modern civil and common law societies, there has been an emphasis on identifying and eliminating gaps in their legal codes (often through the process of analogous reasoning), in the Athenian tradition, while they acknowledge gaps, there seems to have been no effort to adjudicate or amend the law for the future, with the gaps removed. Gagarin also writes that “Greeks were perfectly capable of reasoning by analogy, but they apparently felt no need to fill gaps but were content to leave it to a judge or jury to decide in each case.”  In fact, in the Athenian procedure for selecting judges (dikastai), judges were drawn from a list of 6,000 citizens who had to swear the judges’ oath in order to be included on the list. In the second clause of the oath, the judges had to swear that “…on matters where there are no laws, I will vote in accordance with the most just opinion.”  Not only does this acknowledge gaps, it prescribes an approach for dealing with them, which is different than in most other societies, ancient and modern.

Brock -

Diapsephisis was the procedure by which members were enrolled in the deme and thus were granted citizenship. Aristotle gives an account of this procedure as an enrollment in which the demesmen vote on whether or not the candidate is 18 and a separate vote on whether or not both of his parents are legitimate citizens. There were disputes, however, and Demosthenes Against Eubulides 57 is an example in which Euxitheos had his membership revoked, and appealed to a higher court. Certainly there was a general theme of diapsephisis, however, demes had some freedom in their procedure. The extraordinary diapsephiseis of 346/5 was the result of this freedom. With the rise of illegitimate citizenship, Demophilos proposed that all of the deme registers be checked and that a formal vote would take place, and his proposal was successful. David Whitehead’s book, Demes of Attica, is an excellent source on citizenship procedure in relation to the deme.

Shellman

At a time when physical evidence was rare, Athenian juries would have based their decisions primarily on the litigants’ speeches and witness testimony. Due to the sheer importance of testimony, the temptation to produce false witnesses must have been difficult to resist. Isocrates’ speech Against Callimachus tells of a case where over a dozen false testimonies were given, only to be disproven shortly thereafter. If one litigant wished to challenge the testimony given by his opponent’s witness, there was a procedural maneuver in place allowing him to do so. This procedure, called episkepsis, is referenced by Aristotle. The litigant would have had the opportunity to announce his intention to charge the witness with perjury via a case called dike pseudomartyrion. There is, however, no way for us to be certain what the results of a successful dike pseudomartyrion might have been. Some scholars believe that a successful conviction for perjury might have been grounds to reopen the previous case, but this remains contested. The scholar Gerhard Thur addresses this question in one of his works. Thur concluded that, given the lack of evidence to the contrary, we can probably assume a successful conviction would not have set aside the verdict of the original case. The challenge would seem to be a mechanism to prevent witnesses from lying, rather than some retrospective approach to correcting a verdict. The penalty for perjury would have been atimia (loss of rights and property), punishable upon the third conviction. The prospect of atimia would have likely persuaded witnesses to be truthful.

Ward

Slave testimony could be a vital strategic aspect of Athenian courtroom speeches and in order for slave testimony to be used both litigants would have to agree to it through a slave challenge. Slaves in ancient Athens had to be tortured to extract their testimony. The slave challenge would take one of two forms; one of the litigants could challenge his opponent to provide slaves for torture, or one litigant could challenge the other to torture his own slaves. If the challenged litigant should decline, his opponent would make that the focal point of his argument because, it was believed that he had something to hide or did not feel confident that the slave would support him. One instance of this can be seen in Antiphon 1. “For he refused the one source of sure knowledge, from torture, while he welcomed sources which could not provide information.…. For if the slaves did not support me, he could have offered a vigorous defense against me based on certain knowledge and his mother would have been rid of this charge”

Gillham - Although different procedural guidelines outlined by law existed for different charges and courts, the surviving texts of certain courtroom orations suggest that such regulations and standards may have been commonly ignored. For example, assuming that the defendant Nikoboulos’ claims in Demosthenes 37 embodied truth rather than an effort to misuse the courts for personal victory, the court failed to uphold several procedural requirements throughout his trial. In Demosthenes 37, Nikoboulos filed a paragraphe, the term for an Athenian countersuit, which attempted to reverse a previous judicial decision on the grounds that it was illegal in several ways. First, Nikoboulous characterized it as illegal because his previous accuser, Paintanetos, lacked the standing to sue him. The parties had come to an agreement to transfer the rights of their previously disputed contract to another creditor; such commercial agreements were legally binding in ancient Athens. Upon consenting to transfer the debt to another creditor, Nikoboulous absolved himself of a legal liability to Paintanetos. Second, the decision of the original trial that the paragraphe at hand aimed to reverse was illegal because it wrongly occurred in the mining courts. According to Nikouboulos, the originally disputed contract had nothing to do with mining; it only dealt with the rights to a metal processing plant. Nevertheless, the original case wrongfully occurred in the mining courts, which subjected Nikouboulos to charges in a court with different procedural standards. Accordingly, the original case ignored procedural regulations in two ways: it defied a legally binding contract by which Paintanetos had no standing to sue and it brought the trial to occur in the improper court, under which Nikoboulos became the subject to the wrong procedural standards and guidelines.

This is by no means an exhaustive account of procedure. Other elements not yet covered would include procedural distinctions in different courts (homicide, maritime, mining, etc.) and procedure of appeals to the law courts from other administrative bodies. For more information on procedure, see Harrison’s The Law of Athens: Procedure and Todd’s The Shape of Athenian Law: Harrison, A.R.W. The Law of Athens: Procedure. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971. Todd, S.C. The Shape of Athenian Law. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.

Rhetoric

Due to the scope and time frame of our historical and archeological evidence a fruitful investigation of Greek legal rhetoric must be confined to fourth century Athens. To project a scholarly study of Athenian legal rhetoric upon the whole of Greek law would be premature and irresponsible, as the evidence we have of other poleis’ legal systems is fragmentary and inconclusive. Athenian legal oratory was an act of spectacle and persuasion that demanded rhetorical flare and skill. To secure speeches that employed the best rhetoric and were the most persuasive, Athenians, with sufficient means, hired logographers experienced in legal speech writing and particularly the successful rhetoric of the courts. This legal rhetoric was dominated by allusions to the past, conspiracy, collusion, and characterization. The composition of the court depended on the offense and whether said offense was being prosecuted as a public or private matter, but in the majority of cases jurors were selected by lot and paid by the polis. This meant that the jurors were often from the lower to middle citizen classes and thus the rhetoric of speeches was often directed towards them. The facts and circumstances of individual cases also shaped the rhetoric, as logographers would write speeches for their clients that would portray the facts and case in the best possible way.

Elements of Greek Legal Rhetoric

I.	Characterization a.	Instances in which rhetorical strategies such as characterization were most commonly used in Athenian trials depended heavily on each legal procedural decision made before, during and after each trial, as well as the specifications of each case (i.e. public or private). Instances in which characterization seemed most effective in Athenian trials were those where such strategies were prevalent from the beginning. Beginning courtroom speeches by characterizing opponents would allow the speakers to settle into the courtroom atmosphere, test their boundaries within each trial and make ties back to their original thoughts as they went through the rest of their oration. As was the case concerning Socrates, which was documented by his student Plato in Apology, Socrates began his oration with rhetorical strategies such as characterizing his opponents as well as his situation in a way that he felt was most effective in maintaining an even playing field as the trial played out; an attempt to force the jury members into concealing biases that may have had an impact on his case. For further reading on rhetorical strategies such as characterization, sources including Lysias On the Murder of Eratosthenes, Gagarin and Cohen The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law (Ch.7 ), and Christopher Carey’s Trials from Classical Athens will all display many (if not all) of the specific details concerning characterization as a rhetorical strategy used in Athenian legal processes during the Classical period. b.	Characterization was a dominant rhetorical device used in Athenian legal rhetoric. Lysias’ speeches exemplify this style of rhetoric and the use of characterization to better display the cases of his clients by creating characters for the speakers that fit better with the facts of the case. The characterizations or personae attributed to clients by Lysias are all the more successful because of their “audience’s conspiratorial worldview.” This perspective of the jurors and judges not only allows the logographer to make conspiracy and narrative a major portion of their rhetoric as Roisman suggests, but also allows for subtle restructuring of truth in the characterization of plaintiffs and defendants that is prevalent in Lysias’ orations. “One of the most important features of narrative in Lysias is to draw attention away from gaps and weaknesses in the speaker’s case” and this is most successfully accomplished through his characterization of plaintiffs and defendants. One of Lysias most widely regarded speeches is On the Killing of Eratosthenes and contains ample evidence of his successes in characterization and restructuring of the facts. Euphiletos, the defendant in this case, has admittedly committed the murder of Eratosthenes, a man who seduced his wife. “It is therefore essential for Lysias, in constructing Euphiletos’ defense, to represent the killing of Eratosthenes as a normal or even obligatory response to his adultery, rather than an unusual one. This he achieves in two ways, partly by characterization and partly by narrative.”  Also, to more successfully accomplish the characterization of Euphiletos in the speech, Lysias gives him two layers to his personality. The righteous vindication and pursuit of justice under the laws is the first layer of the persona created for Euphiletos by Lysias in this case. Euphiletos is projected by Lysias’ characterization to be an apparatus of justice for the entire polis. Lysias creates in Euphiletos a person who does not seek riches, wealth, or revenge for prior hostilities, but instead seeks “no other profit beyond the redress granted by the laws.”  The just actions of Euphiletos serve to ground his murder in the deeper significance of the laws and further help to establish his defense beyond simply the strict legal rules. Lysias not only succeeds in creating a potentially victorious case in the facts and laws presented, but further solidifies Euphiletos’ defense in the principal of dike (justice) to give him strong cultural as well as legal standing. c.	Through the time of Demosthenes, Solon’s laws were understood, revered, and even idealized in the courtroom in ways similar to United States Supreme Court justices write of the American constitutional Framers today. Although firmly rooted in the judicial system of Athens, references to Solon as “the most democratic of men” are not always relevant or are contrary to the goals of the cases being litigated. We see him referenced throughout the 4th Century in courtroom speeches for means and ends contrary to his historical construction. Particularly Lysias, whose personal life during the political and philosophical upheaval after the Peloponnesian War, makes references to Solon as the ideal lawgiver contrary to the possible selfish motives behind his cases. Lysias, whose many speeches can be framed in the history of the Thirty Tyrants, was one at that time “who wanted to exact revenge for their sufferings”. Nonetheless, many substantive laws attributed to Solon by Lysias have proven to be correct through scholarly research, including his laws on slander. II. Discourse of Rhetoric a.	Widely considered as the most historical account of Socrates’ trial, Plato’s Apology provides an account of the way that rhetorical strategies revealed conspiracy within the Athenian court system. Various aspects of Socrates’ speech reveal that the accusations being brought against him were motivated largely by political and personal vendetta. The accusers of Socrates, such as Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, all possess various personal issues but bring charges such as ‘corrupting the youth’ and ‘making the worse argument the stronger.’ As well, Aristophanes’ The Clouds worked as a tool of political conspiracy that portrayed Socrates merely as a practitioner and teacher of sophistry and played heavily into the eventual ruling of guilt in Socrates’ trial. The Clouds profound impact on Socrates’ public image, such as a man interested in what is ‘in the sky and below the earth’, required him to spend much time refuting the claims made by Aristophanes. The overall effect of the pre-trial biases held against Socrates required him to not merely defend himself against the charges being brought against him, but he was also obligated to defend his image against personal vendetta and subsequent conspiracy to bring him to trial.

b.	Rhetorical practices in Athenian law in the 4th centruy were similar to the teachings of the sophists in the 5th century. Critics of the sophists, such as Plato, associated courtroom rhetoric with sophism itself. The goal of courtroom oratory was to argue the best case for a client.. This is important for looking at Rhetoric in law, not only to trace where its practice came from, but also the perceptions of it. One crucial component of sophism is moral relativism, which ethical judgments based on the context in which they were made. Moral relativism can be seen in rhetorical strategies in Demothenes, Reply to Lakritos’ Special Plea 35 regarding case building. The speaker established his own credibility by using a contract and depositions taken from witnesses and deconstructed his opponent’s character and legitimacy through ad hominem claims. This is different from moral judgments of philosophy, which defined what was good and bad. One main critique of sophistical practices, including rhetoric, was making the weaker claim the stronger. This created the notion that sophistry, and courtroom oratory, was intentionally deceptive. More information can be found in the Apology and Phaedrus by Plato and Michael Gagarin’s Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law, and Justice in the Age of the Sophists.Capital Punishment c.	To begin with, in Cohen’s “Theories of Punishment” chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, he claimed that litigants often used rhetoric, which openly displayed both a personal motivation for vengeance, and a desire to see the laws of the city upheld. Lene Rubinstein qualified Cohen adding that litigant would also have to tailor their arguments to the “expectations of his audience” and “urge [them] to display their [own] anger against the defendant.”  All in all, to convince the Areopagites to exercise capital punishment classical Attic litigant not only had to convince the Areopagites that the defendant was guilty, but they had to incite dikastic anger toward the defendant. .”  All in all, to convince the Areopagites to exercise capital punishment classical Attic litigant not only had to convince the Areopagites that the defendant was guilty, but they had to incite dikastic anger toward the defendant. This is evident in Lysias’, Against Nicomachus 30, where Nicomachus, the son of a slave and serf to a magistrate, was prosecuted by the Athenian “Board of Auditor for having failed to render an account of his office.” In highlighting Nicomachus’ crime against the polis, the prosecutions’ language also framed Nicomachus as a tyrant who had compromised the integrity of Solon’s laws-the classical law giver: For whereas he had been instructed to transcribe the laws of Solon within four months, he usurped the place of Solon as lawgiver, extended his office over six years instead of four months, and day by day, in return for payment. [Lys. 30.2] Finally, the prosecution commands the dikastes to display their anger saying: It is your duty, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, to remember … how ungrateful [he] has been, his treatment of you with his illegal acts, and… punish him… [and]exact requital now. [Lys. 30.6] Furthermore, the orator asserts that if the court does not oblige him, the laws of the city will not have been upheld and every criminal like Nikomachos will continue to break the cities laws with redoubled confidence. [Lys. 30.23] In the end, the prosecution called for two forms of capital punishes to be exacted simultaneously:  the confiscation of his property and assets, and death. [Lys. 30.27] Finally, perhaps in an attempt to pre-empt his sympathizers, the prosecution warned against acquitting him because of his humble ancestry on a rather crude note, saying, “for his own sake he deserves death; as for them [his ancestry]--the slave-market.”[Ibid.] III. Demos and Class a.	Compared with other areas of Greece, Athenian citizenship now entailed substantial security for a poorer individual’s financial wellbeing and guaranteed participation in administrative oversight of public matters. By the 4th century, the law courts became a vehicle for individual and class interests, as the rhetoric of legal cases revealed Athenian biases and cultural assumptions of wealth and power. The struggle over legal status between the rich and poor of Athens comes to life in the discourse of legal argumentation. For example, in Demosthenes 57, Reply to Euboulides, Euxitheos appeals his ejection from his deme to the general law court and argues that his family was not comprised of aliens or slaves, but poor and humble citizens whose official status was made vulnerable to devious political scheming. Thus, he asserts that because he took part in religious rituals and other forms of public ceremony, that he then displayed the behavior of a citizen and proves his status as such. Euxitheos argues for the rights and privileges of Athenian citizenship because there is only a faint cultural division between the poorest citizens and non-citizens, and the threat of slavery menacingly looms over his head.

For information on Solon and his reforms, see Aristotle’s The Athenian Constitution and P.J. Rhodes’ commentary:

Aristotle, and P. J. Rhodes. 1984. The Athenian Constitution. The Penguin classics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin.

Rhodes, P.J. 1981. A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenian Politeia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

IV. Evidence and Witnesses a.	Litigants strategically placed witnesses depending on what kind of case it was and what creditability the witnesses could provide for that particular case. Witness testimony has the rhetorical power to turn a statement into a fact, since the judges/jurors are said to have relied so heavily on its creditability. This rhetorical power is strengthening an argument and in order to do that the witnesses had to come at a very specific point in a litigant’s speech. By strategically placing creditable witnesses a litigant had that much more of an advantage, over his opponent. Looking at Cases such as Case III: Antiphon 5- on the killing of Herodes, one can see the strategical placement of witnesses and the impact it has on the court system. In this particular case the witnesses are all brought up in the body of the speech. This is where all the evidence is and in order to enrich this evidence the litigant strategical placed all the witnesses in this section. All the witnesses were citizens, thus supplementing their creditability.

Other Elements Not Yet Covered I.	Technical Rhetoric II. Relationship of Politics and the Courts

Culture

Culture: Ancient Greek law was highly reflective of the culture which formed it. This section will primarily focus on Athenian law, though Gortyn Code:Gortyn Law should be considered as well for a complete understanding. Athenian law (particularly in its extent) was highly reflective of society’s emphasis on preserving societal purity.

Bogucki - The perceptions of society and religion in classical Athens were one in the same. Decisions on religious matters as well as secular ones were made by the same body or bodies in all Greek communities throughout all periods of Greek history. Of the offences that could be brought under charge in classical Athens, perhaps the most important and yet most broad, was that of impiety. As mentioned, “impiety” was a broad category that was taken very seriously due to the notion of “pollution”. One convicted of impiety, especially during religious festivals, was often sent into exile; for whatever act was committed “polluted” the entire populace and risked disfavor with the gods for the whole city. There were certainly recognized forms of impiety but such in the case of Socrates, not acknowledging the same gods the city acknowledged, prosecutors could argue for other interpretations of the offense. The fact that impiety was so vague may very well have been the “lived reality of life in Athens”.  

Counceller-  The majority of non-trade laws were aimed at keeping the populace in Athens (particularly its citizens) "pure." The definition of purity depended on who it was applied to. As an example, citizen-wives were expected to be absolutely faithful to their husbands, a successful conviction for violating this social more (and the law which protected it) resulted in the exile ("any punishment short of death") for the offender. Male citizens, in comparison, were allowed virtually free reign in terms of their sexual endeavors, so long as they did not violate the chastity of a female citizen--if they did, the punishment inflicted was "any short of the knife" that the aggrieved husband wished to inflict. In order to keep the citizenry "morally pure," prostitution was legalized: men could have sexual encounters with prostitutes with no legal risk. In fact, there were specific provisions sanctioning prostitution within brothels, including one which granted legal immunity to men against adultery claims for any contact that occurred within a brothel. Collectively, these laws ensured that citizenship was passed on only to those who actually met the requirements (both parents were citizens), thus keeping the citizen-pool "pure."

Dyer - One of the most notable cultural aspects of the ancient Greek legal system was that it reinforced religious regulations. The ancient Greeks held that a soul could become spiritually polluted as a result of actions ranging from adultery to homicide. For religious reasons, polluted persons were forbidden from entering Panhellenic sanctuaries, ritual grounds, the games, the assembly, and the marketplace. Surviving laws from Athens legally prohibited persons accused of adultery, homicide (both intentional and unintentional), and male prostitution from entering these areas. Each of these laws prescribed citizens to administer punishments to violators. In the case of adultery, the law allowed for any penalty except death, while in the cases of homicide and male prostitution, the law specifically mandated death. 

Garriott -  The ancient Greeks acted out in vengeance against wrongdoers and could take matters into their own hands. Disputes could have been settled out of court, but the Athenian legal system was successful in preventing out of court disputes because vengeance could be sought through litigation with more rewards. The desire for retaliation by means of punishing the wrongdoer with physical pain or even death was placed within the customs of ancient Greeks by means of the law and religion. At a funeral, the nearest male heir was instructed to carry a spear and charged with making a proclamation at the tomb against the killer and to avenge the spirit of the dead. The proclamation was customary, but usually the heir would go to court and receive honor because he would express his intelligence and quality of character in the court while proving to do the graphe good by having a killer condemned through execution or exile.  

Hirsch -  Religious oaths appeared frequently in the Athenian legal system. Though the subject is under a lot of scrutiny, most oaths were not legally obligated. The greater purpose of the oath was its use as a rhetorical device. One party would use the absence of an oath, which would usually act as a buffer for a person’s claims, as a defense in their own case. An example of this is in Antiphon V, On the Killing of Herodes. The speaker mentions that the family prosecuting him refused to take an oath concerning their accusations, and neither did their witnesses. If a litigant did refused to swear an oath, it was assumed they did so because they felt the gods would know it was possibly a lie and bring upon them the curse that was a part of every oath. Michael Gagarin supports this in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. Using oath-challenges, a litigant will try to quickly solve a disagreement by asking his opponent to swear under oath. “If, however, the opponent refuses to accept the proposed oath (as he almost always does), the proposer may cite this refusal as evidence of his opponent’s guilt (Gragarin & Cohen 88).” This is largely due to the religious culture of ancient Athens.   Simpson-  The law about male prostitution1 reflects that in culture Athenians believed that submissiveness in male citizens was not allowed. In Athenian culture, males were supposed to be dominant at home and in public in order to be good leaders. When a male citizen prostitutes himself, he cannot participate anymore in religious or political activities. Since he was submissive privately, Athenians believed he could never be dominant in public to lead their city effectively. Athenians also believed that sexual submissiveness was committing hybris against yourself, the act of enjoying a sexual act while shaming another person. You can see this idea in Aeschines’ case Against Timarchos where Aeschines prosecutes Timarchos for male prostitution arguing that Timarchos should not be allowed to participate in religious and political activities that male citizens are entitled to2. For an extensive commentary on Aeschines’ court case, you can see Nick Fisher’s Against Timarchos (2001). For further reference material, you can read Eva Cantarella’s Bisexuality in the Ancient World (2002), David Cohen’s Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (1991), and Marilyn Skinner’s Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (2005). 1 Arnaoutoglou, Ilias. Ancient Greek Laws: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1998. Law 59. 2 Aeschines. Case 2. Against Timarchos. Trans. Nick Fisher. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 71-117.

In conclusion, culture of the Ancient Athenians was reflected through their laws. Laws pertaining to social purity describe how Athenians believed that citizens should be shaped in order to preserve their democratic ideals and be leaders in their city. There are many areas of Athenian culture reflected in law that are not covered. Some of these areas not included symposium, marriage, adultery, citizenship, homicide, heiresses, and social status. Another option for further research about Greek Law is to look at the Gortyn Law Code of Gortyn, Crete.